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Advent And Loss
Our old cat died today. Purrl was 14 years old, a Texas cat as rangy and prickly as a mesquite tree, as spastic as a rabid coyote, as affectionate as a lovestruck Lulabelle. She had been going downhill since Bonnie died. So skinny…when she sprawled out in front of the wood stove, she looked like a tractor wheel had smushed her down flat. She was nervous, restless, unhappy. And today, she left this world and went into the next. Purrl was an extraordinarily sweet cat. She used to pat my wife’s face with the pink pads of her paw, pulling my wife’s face to look directly into her eyes —…
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She Grieves
We visited a town in a nearby state this weekend and spent most of a day browsing through an enormous arts & crafts festival. We were walking in an alley when we saw a handsome German Shepherd tethered to a long leash in a yard. We stopped and spoke to the dog, at which point her owner saw us from her back door and came out to say hello. The lady was about my age and had a strong speech impediment. She also had a sweet and guileless personality. She explained that the dog’s name is Mollie, and that she was until recently a K-9 officer in the local police…
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Departures
The hummingbirds are migrating south now, and it seems that our regulars have already left. Last week, right in the middle of the repugnancy in the cellar, I had scrubbed and cleaned all the feeders and filled them with fresh nectar. The next day after doing so, I went out to watch the little things as they fed, but none were there. Since last Thursday, I have seen only one hummingbird, and he was a male with a very short bill that I have never seen before, probably a migrating fellow passing through and stopping off at a friendly place he’d heard about in some avian chatroom. I looked all…